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Roderick Williams’ and Julius Drake’s English Winter Journey seems such a perfect concept that one wonders why no one had previously thought of compiling a sequence of 24 songs by English composers to mirror, complement and discourse with Schubert’s song-cycle of love and loss.

Opening night at the Metropolitan is a gleeful occasion even when the
composer is long gone, but December 1st was an opening for a living composer who
has been making waves around the world and is, gasp, a woman — the second woman
composer ever to have an opera presented at the Met.

For an opera that has never quite made it over the threshold into the ‘canonical’, the adolescent Mozart’s La finta giardiniera has not done badly of late for productions in the UK. In 2014, Glyndebourne presented Frederic Wake-Walker’s take on the eighteen-year-old’s dramma giocoso. Wake-Walker turned the romantic shenanigans and skirmishes into a debate on the nature of reality, in which the director tore off layers of theatrical artifice in order to answer Auden’s rhetorical question, ‘O tell me the truth about love’.

Heading to N.Y.C and D.C. for its annual performances, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra invited Semyon Bychkov to return for his Mahler debut with the Fifth Symphony. Having recently returned from Vienna with praise for their rendition, the orchestra now presented it at their homebase.

Igor Stravinsky's lost Funeral Song, (Chante funèbre) op 5 conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky in St Petersburg This extraordinary performance was infinitely more than an ordinary concert, even for a world premiere of an unknown work.

On Tuesday evening this week, I found myself at The Actors Centre in London’s Covent Garden watching a performance of Unknowing, a dramatization of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Dichterliebe (in a translation by David Parry, in which Matthew Monaghan directed a baritone and a soprano as they enacted a narrative of love, life and loss. Two days later at the Wigmore Hall I enjoyed a wonderful performance, reviewed here, by countertenor Philippe Jaroussky with Julien Chauvin’s Le Concert de la Loge, of cantatas by Telemann and J.S. Bach.

Here is one of the next new great conductors. That’s a bold statement,
but even the L.A. Times agrees: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s appointment
“is the biggest news in the conducting world.” But Ms. Mirga
Gražinytė-Tyla will be getting a lot of weight on her shoulders.

Macabre and moonstruck, Schubert as Goth, with Stuart Jackson, Marcus Farnsworth and James Baillieu at the Wigmore Hall. An exceptionally well-planned programme devised with erudition and wit, executed to equally high standards.

On November 20, 2016, Arizona Opera completed its run of Antonín Dvořák’s fairy Tale opera, Rusalka. Loosely based on Hand Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, Joshua Borths staged it with common objects such as dining room chairs that could be found in the home of a child watching the story unfold.

If there was ever any doubt that Puccini’s Manon is on a road to nowhere, then the closing image of Jonathan Kent’s 2014 production of Manon Lescaut (revived here for the first time, by Paul Higgins) leaves no uncertainty.

Many opera singers are careful to maintain an air of political neutrality. Not so mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who is outspoken about causes she holds dear. Her latest project, a very personal response to the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, puts her audience through the emotional wringer, but also showers them with musical rewards.

I wonder if Karl Amadeus Hartmann saw something of himself in the young Simplicius Simplicissimus, the eponymous protagonist of his three-scene chamber opera of 1936. Simplicius is in a sort of ‘Holy Fool’ who manages to survive the violence and civil strife of the Thirty Years War (1618-48), largely through dumb chance, and whose truthful pronouncements fall upon the ears of the deluded and oppressive.

For its second opera of the 2016-17 season Lyric Opera of Chicago has staged Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a production seen at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Akhnaten is the third in composer Philip Glass’s trilogy of operas about people who have made important contributions to society: Albert Einstein in science, Mahatma Gandhi in politics, and Akhnaten in religion. Glass’s three operas are: Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten.

Shakespeare re-imagined for the very Late Baroque, with Bampton Classical Opera at St John's Smith Square. "Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare....the God of Our Idolatory". So wrote David Garrick in his Ode to Shakespeare (1759) through which the actor and showman marketed Shakespeare to new audiences, fanning the flames of "Bardolatory". All Europe was soon caught up in the frenzy.

“My father loved Der Rosenkavalier”, said Gus Christie. “I think he would have liked this production”, he added with a wink, “Though he would, as always, have had a lot to say about it”. He’s right. The more we care about an opera, the more we get from fresh perspectives. This 2014 Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier is provocative because it focuses on Baron Ochs and what he stands for. Richard Strauss polishes surfaces so glossy that we’re too dazzled, blinded to the sinister depths that lurk within to think of meaning.

Think about what Der Rosenkavalier might mean. The Marschallin lives in luxury, but she’s not fooled. Like Sophie, she herself was traded in marriage like a consumer product. Baron Ochs symbolizes a system that places more value in crass commerce than on human values. The Marschallin, Kate Royal, appears in a nude suit, rising from her bath like Venus. It’s audacious, but absolutely to the point. She’s flaunting her wares. Her bedroom is invaded by merchants, each flogging some product. One is an Italian Singer (Andrej Dunaev). His song is sweet but banal. Strauss is sending up art calculated to please the marketplace. Baron Ochs (Lars Woldt) is right in. He’s come to buy a bride, but he’ll grope any woman available, even if the “woman” is a man. Only when the Marschallin is alone can she be herself. As Kate Royal sings her last lines at the end of the First Act, the yellow and grey designer wrapping paper decor is transformed by light into silver and gold.

Octavian (Tara Erraught) presents the silver rose to Sophie (Teodora Gheorghiu).but the ritual goes wrong. They fall in love. The audience howled with laughter when the lovers locked foreheads and rocked together in unison, but the naivety contrasts well with the devious machinations going all round them. Humour is a key into Richard Strauss. This Richard Jones production is lively but it contributes greatly to this Richard Strauss anniversary year because it shows how Strauss uses wit as a weapon against mindless conformity. Der Rosenkavalier isn’t superficial, it’s satire. There’s glamour, and romance, but it has a core of solid silver.

If there’s a moral in Der Rosenkavalier, it might be “Things don’t have to be the way we think they should be”. The Marschallin gives up her dream of love so Octavian and Sophie can have a future. She concocts a plot to expose Ochs for what he is: ox by name and nature. Ochs is lured to an inn so garish that anyone with real taste would be screaming to escape from it. Ochs’s favourite song “Ohne mich” is a tune anyone can hum, but that doesn’t make it good music. He’s also easily fooled by fake peasant costumes. Och’s knows what he likes, but that’s the problem. He doesn’t take any one else into consideration. Lars Woldt’s performance is outstanding, one of the sharpest Ochs I can remember offhand. He’s not a comic parody but all too believable. This type inhabits all walks of life, including the opera world. Woldt defines each word with precision, observing the changes in pitch with clear deliberation. Woldt acts well too, moving with animal agility. Ochs is not a buffoon but a man who gets his way by selfishness and cunning. That’s why he’s so dangerous. He knows how to use the system against those less ruthless. There aren’t enough Marschallins around.

The words “Papa! Papa!” ring with shrill accusation. When Ochs is trapped, the stage fills with those whom he’s harmed or could harm if he could. Strauss operas are often “busy” with numerous characters whose moment may not last long but who are integral to the plot. In this production, even non-verbal parts like Ochs’s eldest son and the black servant are given “voices” that define their role perceptively. Ochs’s son can never inherit, and the black servant can’t dream of winning the Marschallin, but they deserve dignity, too. Big on stage ensembles pose problems in any staging. Here, Jones and his Movement Director Sarah Fahie choreograph the interactions between those on stage and the sounds from the pit with such detail that it feels that the score is literally coming to life. Robin Ticciati’s first performance in his new role was somewhat tentative in places, but in the last act everything came together, and the music shone in glorious savagery.

Despite the many superb Der Rosenkavalier productions of the past that have shaped our memories, performances are generally good all round. Kate Royal, a perennial house favourite, won great applause. She’s so beautiful she seems almost too idealized for the part, but I liked the wry grit with which she sang her final benediction to Octavian and Sophie.Tara Erraught’s Octavian was robustly acted with earthy glee. Jones developed Sophie with more personality than the part often receives, so Teodora Gheorghiu could sing it with charm. Glyndebourne’s budget doesn’t run to megastars so lesser roles are often extremely well cast. Michael Krauss’s Faninal was extremely well presented — nice, firm singing and poise. Christopher Gillett and Helene Schneiderman sang Valzacchi and Annina with great character. Robert Wörle and Scott Conner sang The Innkeeper and the Police Commissioner. Even smaller parts were thought through carefully and presented with conviction. Richard Jones’s style (with designs by Paul Steinberg and Nicky Gillibrand) isn’t usually my taste, but his is a production filled with well thought out detail and definition. Ochs might not like it, but I and most of the Glyndebourne audience got it.

Anne Ozorio

For more details please see the Glyndebourne website. This production will also be broadcast live online and in cinemas on 8th June 2014.